Arts & Culture | Theater

Given the exuberance of the Jewish Festival of Freedom, along with its emphasis on transmitting the Jewish heritage to the next generation, perhaps no holiday is better suited than Passover to being turned into a children’s musical.

She pioneered a new form of theater by imitating dozens of New Yorkers who played roles in the anti-Jewish riots in Crown Heights. In “Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities,” Anna Deavere Smith brilliantly embodied both black and Jewish subjects, from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Lubavitch Rabbi Shea Hecht.

One of the most horrifying stories to come out of the Holocaust is the one about the Nazis turning Jews into bars of soap. But is it true? In Jeff Cohen’s new play, “The Soap Myth,” which is now in previews Off Broadway, a Holocaust survivor pits his eyewitness version of the truth against historians and museum curators who insist on documentary evidence. The play asks searching questions about how the Holocaust should be remembered and understood in an age in which survivors are dying out and Holocaust deniers spew their own hateful views.

He added muscle, but it stripped him (so to speak) of his self-esteem. That’s the takeaway from Aaron Berg’s solo show, “The Underbelly Diaries,” in which a twenty-something bodybuilder finds himself performing in clubs as a male stripper — a career that led to stints as both a gigolo and male prostitute. In the show, the playwright reflects on a period in his life in which he learned about a seamy side of American society.

She brought a mystical Jewish strain into her career in the Church and gave comfort to many converts from Judaism who struggled to maintain a connection to Jewish belief and practice. Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century saint whose grandfather was forced to renounce his Jewish identity by the Spanish Inquisition, never lost touch with her Jewish roots. In Begonya Plaza’s new play, “Teresa’s Ecstasy,” starring the playwright, the nun’s Jewish heritage is seen as a driving force in her life and work.

Can a child be liberated from his or her parent’s traumatic past? In Michel Wallerstein’s new play, “Flight,” the relationship between a Holocaust survivor and her son is warped by her unwillingness to talk about what she suffered during the war. As his mother begins to slide into dementia, her son finds himself running out of time to unlock the secrets buried deep inside his mother.